Dark Tantra – Tantra Bondage – Goddess Kali Retreat

This weekend we will explore the Kali nature within us. BDSM and black tantra merge into an exciting modern tantric ritual that teaches us to accept our shadows and free ourselves from our illusionary limitations.

Where?
We kindly invite you to a special retreat in a wonderful location: Florentine Chateau: Chateau St Victor la Coste, celebrating the rituals of dark tantra combining them with modern BDSM.

When?
The workshop takes place between the 26th & 28th of May 2017.
We will gather at 17:00 the first day and we will end on Sunday at 18:00.

We kindly invite you to a special retreat in a wonderful location: Florentine Chateau: Chateau St Victor la Coste, celebrating the rituals of dark tantra combining them with modern BDSM.

This weekend we will explore the Kali nature within us. BDSM and black tantra merge into an exciting modern tantric ritual that teaches us to accept our shadows and free ourselves from our illusionary limitations.

A modern tantra – bondage artist Miss Marlèn from Berlin will be your guide and will teach you the ritual art of tantra bondage, also called Shibari. Her art is refined and moving, beautiful and confronting.

Tara Long a classic tantra teacher will teach you Kali rituals to purify your karmic being and soul.

Kali the Hindu Goddess of total destruction gives us the opportunity to burn the old and resurrect the new in our lives. When we dare to face our shadows and play with them through guided ritual, our shadow becomes our brightest light.

About Goddess Kali

Kali teaches that pain, sorrow, decay, death, and destruction are not overcome by denying or explaining them away. These are inevitable parts of life and denying them is futile. For us to realize the fullness of our being and to realize our potential, we must accept these parts of existence.

Kali’s gift is freedom. The freedom of the child to revel in the moment, obtained only after confrontation with or acceptance of death. Kali is Mother, not because She protects us from the way things are, but because She reveals our mortality to us and releases us to act fully and freely; She releases us from the web of pretense, practicality and rationality.

Of all the Devi forms, Kali is the most compassionate because She provides liberation to Her children. A soul who engages in spiritual practice to remove the illusion of the ego sees Mother Kali as sweet, affectionate, and overflowing with love for Her children.

In Hinduism, all goddesses are ultimately one: Devi. She takes different forms to allow us to comprehend Her multiple possibilities. One of the most powerful is the phenomenal Kali.

Kali’s blackness symbolizes Her comprehensive nature, as in black all colors merge. Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in Her (Mahanirvana Tantra). Black can also represent the absence of color, signifying the nature of Kali as ultimate reality. Either way, Kali’s color symbolizes Her transcendence of all form.

Kali’s nudity has similar meaning. She is described as garbed in space or sky clad. In Her primordial nakedness, She is free from all covering of illusion. Her nudity represents totally illumined consciousness. Kali is the bright fire of truth, not hidden by the trappings of ignorance.

Kali is full-breasted. As our Mother, She creates endlessly. Her garland of fifty human heads, each representing one of the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolizes knowledge and wisdom. Her girdle of severed human hands are the principal instruments of work and signify the action of karma. The binding effects of karma are overcome by devotion to Kali. She blesses devotees by cutting us free from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth are symbolic of purity and Her red tongue shows that She consumes all things and enjoys tasting what society regards as forbidden, Her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world’s flavors.

Kali’s four arms represent the complete circle of creation and destruction. Her right hands, making the sign of fear not and conferring boons, represent Her creative aspect. Her left hands, holding a bloodied sword and a severed demon head, represent her destructive aspect. The bloodied sword and severed head symbolize the destruction of ignorance and the dawn of knowledge. The sword is the sword of knowledge, that cuts through ignorance and destroys false consciousness (the severed head). Her three eyes represent the sun, moon and fire, with which She observes the past, present and future. This is the origin of the name Kali, the feminine form of Kala, the Sanskrit word for Time.

The cremation ground, Kali’s dwelling place, is where the five elements are dissolved. This symbolizes the dissolving of attachments, anger, lust and other emotions, feelings and ideas. The heart of the devotee is where this burning takes place and it is in her heart that Kali dwells. The devotee, under Kali’s influence, burns away all limitations and ignorance. This inner cremation fire in the heart is the fire of knowledge, which Kali bestows.

The image of Shiva lying under the feet of Kali shows Shiva as the passive potential of creation. Kali is Shakti, the universal feminine creative principle and energizing force. Kali empowers Shiva. Shakti is expressed as the i in Shiva’s name. Without the i, Shiva becomes Shva, which in Sanskrit means a corpse. So, without Shakti, Shiva is powerless or inert. This is the origin of the saying Shiva without Shakti is Shava.

On Intensive body-work

This master-class is an open field of experimentation on the polarity of safety and explorative danger between restriction and surrender, between the limitations and freedom that arise from it.

We use movement and stillness, ropes, senses, heart and understanding.

A practice based workshop with useful techniques, physical experiences and the potential for rich spiritual echo.

How many boundaries do we need to feel that we are in good hands – and to move freely beyond them? Which ones are unnecessary? Where are our own boundaries and limitations– on our body, in movement, in contact or communication? How come we sometimes find it exciting to be bound or restricted–how do we experience resistance and friction? When is consensual struggle deeply peacemaking? How come we are drawn towards reaching our limits and what is it that makes us want to push them?

We will be working with tools from contact improvisation, body work, Japanese Bondage and other forms of taming the body, with elements of rituals and contemplation. We will be working alone, in pairs or in a group. Our goal is to experience delightful change at our limits.

On Shibari and BDSM

Shibari or Kinbaku is the art of Japanese rope bondage, the eroticised and ritualised form of bondage. It surely is an art because the highly complex figures seem to be reserved for those with experience and practice.

This retreat is an attempt at honoring the Japanese tradition but yet finding anarchic ways of using the rope in order to enable inspiring, effective and pleasurable results in just a short time. The most important thing is the contact with your own and your partner’s body – because ultimately the ropes are an extension of your own energy.

Bondage can be sexy, aesthetic, playful, heart-opening, meditative, scary, technical, rough or tender. This master-class is an invitation to find out what aspect appeals to you the most.

Practical

From whom:

For adults > 18, all genders, men / women, all sexual preferences, singles and couples.

Language:

Teachings will be in English / German.

Number of participants/students:

Minimum number of participants: 14, Maximum number of participants: 18.

Payment & Registration Conditions

Send us an email that you would like to register and with how many people: info@deconnection.org We send you a registration form with some details and questions. Fill out the form and email it back to our administrator: Elsa Bekker.

Your registration and reservation are valid after payment only. You will receive a confirmation per email.

Closing date for registration: 25th of April 2017.

Location

Historic and Beautiful Location in the South of France

Experience a romantic top-class weekend by staying in this most wonderful historic chateau with its romantic bedrooms and bathrooms, a beautifully designed garden, outdoor swimming pool, classic dining room and much more to enjoy and experience. Enjoy the excellent food and lovely hosts!

After studying cultural and social sciences and law, I graduated as a physiotherapist in 2006. Today I am working as a physio- and body therapist, (yoga) teacher, and trainer in my own practice. I am also dancer, singer and performer. My love applies to contemporary dance, contact improvisation and the art of improvisation at all. My approach is one of the loving assumptions of what Is.

In 2008, I began to expand my bodywork around the sexual aspect. The basis was the tantric ritual, the boundaries of which I have continually explored and extended. Touching people is in the true essence a profession and calling for me. Involving sexuality in this process opens up another dimension that is exciting and deeply nourishing. In working with sexual energy, aesthetics and poetry fascinate me as well as juxtapositions and contradictions that are part of the passionate desire and the body images.

I define myself as queer and use this term as an auxiliary construction for my general attitude that desire and sexuality, gender identity and love are infinitely diverse and need manifold expression.

I am interested in Kink and BDSM practices, because I am interested in everything that extends the human spectrum of sensibility and expression. I am interested in all the colors of the sensory palette, and our longings are the key to great creativity and freedom.

The taboo and the censorship are the opponents of our playful, strong and lustful self.

I love to accompany people into experiences where they can experience completely new qualities; Surrender as an increase in submissive attitudes, sweet pain, their own longing for power or powerlessness or helplessness . However, also vulnerability, openness and the experience to be held in this. Perhaps feelings that they have never associated with each other are very closely related. I like to be a sensitive companions when new paths open up on the map of emotions and learn new things every time I work with a client.

I love to support this adventure and profound journey. I will hold the space, a safe container.

In my workshops I create a sexual laboratory in which I combine tantra with elements from dance, body work and contact improvisation. This way our bodies become sensuous, receptive and permeable to spontaneity. The sharpened perception is refined, the curiosity is awakened and we open ourselves through subtle impulses to strong as well as to refined stimuli, devotion, pain, intensity, lust and pleasure.

I have been educated as a classical dancer, choreographer and neuroscientist in Amsterdam. In 2009 I obtained a Doctorate in Creation-process Psychology and in 2010 a doctorate in Integral Sexology.

I have been a tantric teacher and sex-surrogate since 2000. I was educated by Tibetan masters in Tantrayana since 1993.

I also trained with the Connection University for Advanced Erotology, (www.theconnectionuniversity.com), and co-operated with ICASA (United Kingdom) and sexual shaman, Ray Stubbs, PhD from the United States among many other professionals in the tantric domain.

Since 2011 I am honored to be the Dean of the Rasayana Tantra Academy and the Love Academy, both institutes affiliated with the Connection University For Advanced Erotology and situated in Leiden, The Netherlands.

I am a Dutch citizen and work and live in the Amsterdam area. I am married and a proud mother of two daughters: 10 years old and 13 years old. Languages spoken: Dutch, English, German, French, Russian (fair).

I am a mentor, trainer and sex educator for adults, who want to enrich their sexual, intimate and relational scope, connect more profoundly to their sexual energy and develop their sexual, creative potential with greater awareness and joy.

I accept adult clients (18+) of all ages, genders and sexual orientation. I am highly analytical, however also highly intuitive in my work, body- and spiritual intelligent. I create an atmosphere of warmth, care, empathy and trust with clients of various ages, issues and genders.

As an international lecturer, tantric teacher and sexuality educator, I work from a transpersonal and integral perspective. I love to share my knowledge of western and eastern sexuality, my rich embodied sexual experience, my blissful energy, and last but not least my Love. My pragmatic and effective methods and training programs are well-known throughout Europe.

My extensive experience and training includes:

Shamanic training and initiation, spiritual healing and sexuality, since 1994

Surrogate Partner Therapy in the western medical model, as a complementary form of therapy providing sexual initiations, sexual de-blocking and sexual healing, since 2000

Thousands of individual sessions with singles and couples, since 2000

Group sessions, master-classes, lectures on classical Erotology and Tibetan Tantra, since 2000

Research:

My sexological research includes multiple orgasmic experiences in men and women, female orgasm and empowerment, the revival of BDSM, Tantra Ethics, Neuroscience and Sexuality.

Book:

In 2013 I published the world’s first book on Integral and Transpersonal Sexology. ISBN: 978-1-291-60902-8

My Motto:

Experiencing sexual intimacy and physical love is a human right, is God’s gift to mankind and one of the greatest presents you can offer yourself. Choose for abundance, happiness, intimacy and true connection now! Let your life become fully orgasmic and creative, make use of your sexual energy and capacity. Live it to the MAX!

Please note: all content and text in this brochure is intellectual property of the author, Dr. Tara Long.

No part of this content or the therein expressed ideas and / or concepts may be reproduced, used, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or any other manner, without the prior written consent of the author of this brochure. Also acquisition of (parts of) the content in edited form is not permitted!